Location: Arles, France

Design Team: Charles Zana / Myamo

Year: 2026

Artist and Founder: Jean-Marc Bustamante

Project Initiator: Myriam de Picciotto

Restoration Design: Charles Zana

Project Delivery: Éric Perez / Myamo

Architecture and Exhibition Photography: Grégoire Dablon, Hervé Hôte

Design Features: Fonds Bustamante occupies the former Église Sainte-Croix in Arles’ La Roquette district. Once a place of worship on a pilgrimage route, the building later served as a ballroom, artistic venue, hotel and spa. Artist Jean-Marc Bustamante and architect Charles Zana chose not to suppress these competing histories. Instead, the accumulated fabric became the basis of the new institution: the restoration does not return the church to a single period, but makes its surviving walls, arches and spatial proportions legible again.

A long, nave-like axis organises the ground floor. At the street, a monumental bronze-toned metal door with latticework marks the contemporary intervention while retaining the restraint of the facade. Inside, surviving stone walls and arches sit beside new pale surfaces. A stair at the end of the axis links three levels of galleries, preserving the slow, processional movement into the depth of the former church without reproducing its original religious programme.

Zana resisted turning the interior into a completely neutral white box. Stone, concrete and grey-white tones establish a calm setting in the galleries, keeping artworks in dialogue with the historic fabric. The stairwell shifts to terracotta walls associated with the nearby Camargue, paired with terrazzo steps made by local craftspeople. Above, exposed white corrugated aluminium defines the ceiling as a clearly contemporary layer while reinforcing the building’s long direction.

The most rewarding details are the small distances that remain visible between old and new. Broken stone edges, the measured folds of the metal ceiling, the thickness of former openings and the joints between exhibition walls and inherited masonry keep the act of restoration readable. Bustamante added a narrow strip of yellow enamelled lava tiles to the facade, a precise flash of colour that acknowledges Vincent van Gogh and carries the artist’s intervention into the street.

The foundation was conceived as more than an archive of Bustamante’s own work. Its inaugural exhibition, En Miroirs, places his photography, painting and sculpture in conversation with artists including Cristina Iglesias, Franz West and Rodney Graham. A street-level cafe and cobbled terrace open the institution toward the neighbourhood, while an artist residence occupies the upper level. The restored church thus becomes an active intersection of exhibition, research, teaching and everyday urban life.

Design Team: Born in Tunis and raised in Paris, Charles Zana studied architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris before establishing his practice in 1990. Working primarily from Paris, the studio undertakes residences, hotels, retail interiors, art foundations and exhibition environments across France, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States. Zana also designs furniture and objects, allowing architecture, furnishing and art collections to be considered within one spatial narrative.

Zana often describes his work through the idea of a “domestic theatre”. Rather than relying on a single formal signature, the practice builds atmosphere through proportion, circulation, material tactility and the relationship between furniture and art. Long-term collaboration with lighting designers, landscape architects and craftspeople is central to this method, particularly where stone, timber, metal and colour must form a continuous level of detail. Cultural work includes Fondation CAB in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, spaces for Les Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and numerous galleries and collection environments.

Charles Zana led the restoration design for Fonds Bustamante, with Éric Perez and Myamo carrying the project through delivery. Completed over eighteen months, the intervention addressed the cleaning and retention of historic masonry, circulation across three exhibition levels, the bronze-toned entrance, corrugated aluminium ceiling, terracotta stairwell and locally crafted terrazzo elements. Artist Jean-Marc Bustamante and project initiator Myriam de Picciotto were closely involved, allowing architectural restoration, institutional purpose and inaugural exhibition planning to develop together.